I have some games that save data files in my home folder? Is there a way to make them save these files inside the game prefix?
With my experience in recent memory on Lutris v0.5.13, it’s NOT proper to let Lutris use the standard system installed Wine’s default prefix, which is “~/.wine” (i.e. the “.wine” folder in ones Home directory), if you want stuff to work properly. but I think it will use this by default unless you manually set it to use something else.
the key is to let Lutris itself create a completely fresh prefix which is done like this… right click game shortcut in Lutris… ‘Configure > Game options’. then on ‘Wine prefix’ type in, for example, “/home/user/GameNameHere/” (without the " and ‘user’ is whatever your system is set to), then when you start the game it will create a fresh prefix for use with that game.
but once you sort that stuff out, with random games, the save data location will be something like (assuming you used the example I mentioned above)… “/home/user/GameNameHere/drive_c/” at which point the general directory structure is setup like Windows is at this point and then you just have to figure out where your game saves it’s data to, which will generally be somewhere in the “/users/user/” location in maybe ‘AppData’ etc.
I have a game - NFS: Hot Pursuit 2, which creates a folder ‘EA Games’ in my home folder. The game prefix is in ~/Games. I added the prefix manually, from previous installation.
I see. I imagine that’s doing stuff a bit differently(?).
because normally all game save data etc should be stored inside of the prefix location, since it’s sort of like a virtual windows install. but who knows, Lutris might be doing additional stuff I am not aware of as I just install my games typically using PlayOnLinux through a temporary wine prefix, with the game going to another hard drive I have, then I delete the temporary PlayOnLinux prefix, so only the installed game data is left on the other hard drive, and then I make a shortcut to the games main exe through Lutris using basically the info I posted in my first post above and it ‘should’ store everything pretty much like I was saying.
I think the peak of the Need for Speed series is… NFS: Most Wanted (2005) with widescreen fix (i.e. github[.]com/ThirteenAG/WidescreenFixesPack/releases/tag/nfsmw ) applied so it displays properly on modern resolutions like 1080p etc (it even works with my XBox360 controller). on this game it stores it’s save data at, for example, “/home/user/PrefixNameHere/drive_c/users/user/Documents/NFS Most Wanted/InGameSaveNameHere/” (with the basic single file saved in that directory).
so unless Lutris is doing some stuff I am not aware of, the game itself should determine the save location and it’s probably not changeable (at least not easily). but generally saved game data goes into the wine prefix location… ‘/home/user/WinePrefixNameHere/’ etc.
I am not sure if that will help you or not though but it’s what I generally do.
p.s. if someone else knows more feel free to chime in.
Any specific reason why are you using PlayOnLinux instead of Lutris for installing games? PlayOnLinux is not developed anymore, i think.
Well I mainly say it as stuff seems to install okay on PlayOnLinux. I never use those Lutris install scripts to install games through Lutris on the 5-10 or so games I play/replay. you might be okay doing it through Lutris (although I heard of some having issues installing games etc through Lutris in the comments around here lately(?), but I don’t know the details), but this is just the way I have always done things and never had a issue, at least so far.
you don’t have to use PlayOnLinux, as a standard system Wine installation will likely be okay to in getting things installed, but since I install my games to another hard drive, it’s nice for getting just the game itself installed and then I simply delete the PlayOnLinux created Wine prefix and then I am only left with the installed game data at which point I just manually make a shortcut to the games main EXE through Lutris and then play basically (using the ‘GE 8-12’ runner or thereabouts etc and setting up the ‘Wine prefix’ location, as I was saying, in Lutris itself as all of the games I play are offline only and run from the installation on my hard drive basically).
but in regards to that ‘Wine prefix’ section in Lutris itself… I noticed if you have Lutris itself create a folder structure two deep it will fail basically (I ‘think’ this is a bug in Lutris). like for example “/home/user/Folder1/GameNameHere/” it will fail unless you manually create that ‘Folder1’ in advance (through file manager etc) at which point Lutris will be okay at that point as it won’t have a problem creating the ‘GameNameHere’ folder to store it’s own wine data basically from the GE 8-12 runner etc.
but that’s why I used the “/home/user/GameNameHere/” example for you since Lutris won’t have issues doing that since it’s not creating a folder that’s two folders deep from Lutris itself. but I currently have my own personal setup sort of like “/home/user/.RandomFolderNameHere/GameNameHere/” so this way it’s ‘hidden’ in the file manager by default as you can only see it, at least on my Linux Mint (Xfce) system, by pressing CTRL+H in the file manager which will show hidden folders (i.e. which is anything with a “.” in front of a folder you create) or if you want to access it without the CTRL+H, if you know what it is you can just type the location in your file manager and go to it that way to. but this is just the way I am doing it so the Lutris made stuff is not shown in my file manager by default on a typical default view. just a preference is all, you can do yours differently if you like.
but with all of that said… I guess I am using a more non-standard way to get things up and running (as I get people would probably prefer to use Lutris itself to go from game installation to ready-to-use game state though), as it probably takes a bit more effort, but it works.
note: but, at least so far in my testing, it seems each new wine prefix created with GE 8-12 (or so) takes roughly 500-600MB. so currently I got nearly all of my games in one prefix I created and one other game in it’s own prefix to help cut back on using more disc space as this is probably generally okay, but if one wants to be extra safe, one can create a new prefix for each game they play but it will use about 500-600MB per prefix created, so if you got plenty of games that could start to use quite a bit of HDD/SSD space.
p.s. I know that PlayOnLinux only has up-to Wine v6.17 (64-bit) (or up-to 7.22 (32-bit)) in it by default (like for a option for you to install on ‘Tools > Manage Wine versions’ and on ‘amd64’ tab (as ‘x86’ tab is 32-bit)) but one can manually setup newer Wine versions on it as I currently got v7.0.2 and v8.0.2, but if a person is generally installing stuff, at least so far I never had any issues using v6.0.1, which PlayOnLinux already has as a option to use if you want.